Taiwan Restricts Russia, Belarus To CPUs Under 25 MHz Frequency (tomshardware.com) 194
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: From now on, Russian and Belarusian entities can only buy CPUs operating at below 25 MHz and offering performance of up to 5 GFLOPS from Taiwanese companies. This essentially excludes all modern technology, including microcontrollers for more or less sophisticated devices. Due to restrictions imposed on exports to Russia by the United States, United Kingdom, and the European Union, leading Taiwanese companies were among the first to cease working with Russia after the country started full-scale war against Ukraine in late February. This week Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) formally published its list of high-tech products that are banned from exportation to Russia and Belarus, which prevents all kinds of Taiwan-produced high-tech devices as well as tools used to make chips (whether or not they use technologies originated from the U.S., U.K., or E.U., which were already covered by restrictions) to be exported to the aggressive nation. [...]
Starting today, Russian entities cannot buy chips that meet one of the following conditions from Taiwanese companies, reports DigiTimes:
- Has performance of 5 GFLOPS. To put it into context, Sony's PlayStation 2 released in 2000 had peak performance of around 6.2 FP32 GFLOPS.
- Operates at 25 MHz or higher.
- Has an ALU that is wider than 32 bits.
- Has an external interconnection with a data transfer rate of 2.5 MB/s or over.
- Has more than 144 pins.
- Has basic gate propagation delay time of less than 0.4 nanosecond.
In addition to being unable to buy chips from Taiwanese companies, Russian entities will not be able to get any chip production equipment from Taiwan, which includes scanners, scanning electron microscopes, and all other types of semiconductor tools that can be used to make chips locally or perform reverse engineering (something that the country pins a lot of hopes on).
Starting today, Russian entities cannot buy chips that meet one of the following conditions from Taiwanese companies, reports DigiTimes:
- Has performance of 5 GFLOPS. To put it into context, Sony's PlayStation 2 released in 2000 had peak performance of around 6.2 FP32 GFLOPS.
- Operates at 25 MHz or higher.
- Has an ALU that is wider than 32 bits.
- Has an external interconnection with a data transfer rate of 2.5 MB/s or over.
- Has more than 144 pins.
- Has basic gate propagation delay time of less than 0.4 nanosecond.
In addition to being unable to buy chips from Taiwanese companies, Russian entities will not be able to get any chip production equipment from Taiwan, which includes scanners, scanning electron microscopes, and all other types of semiconductor tools that can be used to make chips locally or perform reverse engineering (something that the country pins a lot of hopes on).
Enjoy your retro gaming. (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder where you can download a copy of DOS 6 and Win 3.1?
People of Russia. Remember Putin did this to you.
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> People of Russia. Remember Putin did this to you.
> DOS 6 and Win 3.1?
and Bill Gates did this to us.
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DOS 6 and Win 3.1?
and Bill Gates did this to us.
DOS 6 was the last decent OS Microsoft ever made.
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DOS was an operating system?
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Single user, no native networking, no multitasking
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Hey, but it provided a file system. What do you think the D in DOS stands for ?
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Well, not all 386s either. I've used a 386 40MHz and that machine screamed on Windows 3.1. But they can adopt a 486 as well - there were 486SX-25 processors.
But ... nah. You really wanted a 33MHz 386 for Windows 3.1.
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About the best PC CPU you can get is a 386. I wonder where you can download a copy of DOS 6 and Win 3.1?
A Russian activist said Putin is taking the Russian economy back to the 1990s. Why not make it official with beige '90s boxes, Doom parties, techno raves, and lots of beige Dockers.
Re: Enjoy your retro gaming. (Score:2)
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I remember those days, upgrading from a 286 to a 386SX and then 486DX between 1989 - 1992 .
486 were quite expensive in the early 1990s. 386s were much more common for that era. RAM was extremely pricey as much.
I bought a 486DX with 16MB of RAM as a teenager to run OS/2 2.0 in 1992. That cost about $4000 back then.
Interestingly, Wikipedia says i386 production only stopped in 2007. I had no idea it went on for that long. 22 years is quite a run for a CPU. I don't think any new PCs used any 386 variant past 19
Re: Enjoy your retro gaming. (Score:2)
3.1 ran on a 286.
Re:Enjoy your retro gaming. (Score:4, Informative)
Remember we've had zero legitimate elections for the past 16 years.
Remember saying anything against this war coul land you in prison for up to 15 years.
Remember Putler practically owns the army and police and they will fight you hard.
Remember outspoken Putler's opponents are killed.
Remember Putler changed the constitution to stay in power until 2036.
Remember Russians cannot own arms (we can but it's extremely complicated) unlike Americans where you've got mass murders every week.
Also fuck you for not knowing anything about our country and claiming it's our fault. Russians of Russia are scared brainwashed manipulated rats.
Re:Enjoy your retro gaming. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the comment you were replying to meant to imply it's the fault of the Russian people. I can't speak for everyone of course, but I think most people realize it's not the fault of the people but the government, and more specifically certain people in the government. Rather, I think his comment was more about hoping the people of Russia will do something to change the situation even if it's not their fault. Those of us outside of Russia want to change the situation, but that desire has to be tempered against the fact that Russia is a nuclear power.
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Childhood memory (Score:2)
Time to Sell off my 386's! (Score:2)
Hey Russia, I have some 386's @ 16Mhz for you at slightly inflated prices! Act now and Ill include some windows 3.0!
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Hey Russia, I have some 386's @ 16Mhz for you at slightly inflated prices! Act now and Ill include some windows 3.0!
Hard pass comrade, rather have a 486DX-25 with Win95
Still enough to make weapons (Score:3)
The point is to hurt their economy (Score:4, Insightful)
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Some whataboutery for you.
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While true, the US in 1945 didn't have to worry about other countries freezing us out of the world economy or cutting us off from vital suppies - pretty much everyone was behind getting Japan to surrender.
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the point is, russia doesn't really give a shit about US "sanctions". they have all the materials they need on their territory, and produce sufficient food.
the US are deluded to believe they'll win this one in the long term.
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I heard PutiePie's biggest fear is to end up having his body dragged through the streets of Moscow.
In the spirit of reconciliation, I offer the following compromise: drag half his body through Moscow and half through Kyiv.
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If they divert too much from keeping their country afloat there'll be a coup.
At the moment, though, his approval ratings have increased, not dropped.
Don't forget that outside pressure tends to forge a nation together, not split it apart. It sometimes works to cause an uprising, but it's the exception.
Re: The point is to hurt their economy (Score:2)
There was another Vlad once.
Shish kebab anyone?
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Accurate missile guidance systems can be made within those restrictions.
Considering how abysmally [reuters.com] Russian guided missiles have performed, they have a long way to go [nytimes.com] even if they can afford these chips. Hitting a toilet on a beach [coventrytelegraph.net] with a $5 million missile is about as Russian as you can get when talking about accuracy.
Russia is so desperate for chips, they've pulled them out of stolen washing machines [yahoo.com]. If they can't get much performance out of a modern chip, they are in for a world of hurt using something from 20+ years ago.
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That beach toilet was - unfortunately - a relevant target, because the deputy mayor of Odessa happened to take a leak there while the missile hit. I certainly do not think, that Russia has a viable future, especially if they keep going like this, but we should definitely not underestimate their current capabilities in inflict pain and suffering.
These restrictions on chip deliveries will not make much of an impact at the battle field right now, but it will wear down their economy over time. Remember, that th
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Comment shouldn't have been downvoted. The stripping-washing-machines bit is a bit farfetched. And even if it isn't true, it would just be a result of dumb soldiers hearing "We need chips!" and thinking stealing random chips from consumer electronics will somehow help.
I'm sure the person from the Ukrainian government who told the anecdote believes it too, because people don't understand how electronics work.
The Russians are stealing washing machines for the same reason anyone else steals stuff. They're valu
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Accurate missile guidance systems can be made within those restrictions.
Only if they have enough 50+ year old programmers who still know how to write clean efficient code. Getting hard to find these days.
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that's just a consequence of the idiotic US school system.
Russian kids trounce US kids in all the sciences.
hell, a large population of US kids believe that the earth is flat !
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IMO, older, more experienced devs such as myself tend to write VASTLY cleaner and more efficient code.
In part because, back in the day, we didn't have any other choice.
But also because we've seen countless fads come and go, and have learned to recognize when new things bring genuine value to the table, versus when they simply repeat the failed experiments of the past.
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Doesn't mean it's going to be easy or quick to do though, which I guess is kind of the point of the sanction. This is all about depriving Russia of the tech they have grown accustomed to and forcing them to
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You think that's impressive, you wouldn't believe how fast a thrown rock solves Einstein's equations.
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You think oil, gas, and grain prices are high now? Just imagine what they are going to be if this war and accompanying sanctions continue to be in place for several more months, or even stretch into years.
There's a global energy shortage coming if we don't see things improve in a hurry.
In the USA we see a moronic federal government decide to react to high fuel prices by increasing the amount of corn turned into ethanol fuel. That's not a wise thing to do.
This energy shortage is largely self imposed. Russia did a lot of damage in Ukraine that will keep food and fuel flowing out of that region of the world. That did nothing to stop people from producing food and fuel in other parts of the world. What stopp
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Not so much C3 nodes or the things that make platforms like the S-400 or the T-14's "APS" work. DSPs for radar, IR, sonar, etc. are crucial and are restricted.
Left in place long enough and this will degrade their media production and video surveillance systems. So many cheap NVR systems are based on things like the Hi3536 or similar SoCs; they have Arm Cortex CPUs at their heart, usually multi-core, usually running low-GHz clocks. All restricted now. Modern media camera platforms are similarly outfitted.
Int
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those are imported from China...
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Accurate missile guidance systems can be made within those restrictions.
Of course they can. But missile guidance is not rocket science. Well obviously it is, but one of my friends implemented a fully autonomous missile guidance system in 6 months for a university thesis. It is trivial and within the capabilities of any university student to do with very simple mathematics.
Point is: It doesn't decide wars. Reconnaissance decides wars. No point in having missile guidance if you don't know where you're shooting them, and implementing full realtime video analysis cannot be done on
Re: Still enough to make weapons (Score:2)
One thing no one has mentioned yet is that Russia does in fact have a native semiconductor design and manufacture industry, unless there's been a fire in Zelenograd that I've missed, which is entirely possible.
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I mean you aren’t wrong. Russia used to produce tons of semiconductors for their own domestic and military markets. From transistors to logic gates to custom hybrid designs.
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erh, nope.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Could a modern CPU be underclocked to 25 MHz? (Score:2)
Re:Could a modern CPU be underclocked to 25 MHz? (Score:4, Interesting)
25 Mhz is close the record low frequency for an Intel CPU of this decade. Microcontrollers like you'd see in an Arduino or Raspberry Pi 2040 can go all the way down to lees than 1 Hz.
The basic processing logic can go as slow as you want. There are a few blocks like the random number generator that have analog considerations and expect a clock tick to come along every now again. Which isn't to say I know that the rng specifically has a lower limit, but I can see how it *might* based on my understanding of the circuit. A modern INtel CPU has a LOT of different blocks doing a lot of different things, some that have considerations on the analog domain.
Re:Could a modern CPU be underclocked to 25 MHz? (Score:5, Interesting)
I assume that 25MHz refers to how fast you could clock it, not how fast you do clock it. In principle, there shouldn't be any reason why you can't clock a modern CPU at 25Mhz, but some operations might time out. For instance, the RAM in modern computers is basically banks of billions of tiny capacitors, each of which can hold a charge or not, to represent a 1 or a 0. The charge leaks away quite quickly, and has to be periodically refreshed. The refresh interval is normally derived from the system clock, so if it's happening at a few percent of the frequency that it's meant to, the charge might drain before the chip has a chance to work out whether it needs to put the charge back. So your RAM might appear to always contain all zeroes.
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Yes, but you just need to read the summary, not even TFA to see that there are more limitations that exclude pretty much every modern CPU or GPU.
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Re:Could a modern CPU be underclocked to 25 MHz? (Score:5, Funny)
They could consult with CenturyLink - from what I've seen, CenturyLink is quite experienced in offering and maintaining very slow technology.
Is there anything available anyway? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I wish I had mod points right now. I'm not sure if your comment is better moderated as funny or insightful.. equal shots of both.
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All it does is create incentive to make one OEM (bidding for TSMC capacity window) snitch on another OEM if they try to sell to russia. This makes smuggling of base components at a scale surprisingly difficult (lest your competitor documents your trade chain and bam, you've nowhere to manufacture your chip).
Economic maxim: Only things reasonably in surplus (no production monopolies) are easy to smuggle. If a monopoly tells you to not resell to somebody, you simply don't.
Looks like (Score:3)
Looks like the Arduino line can be sent to Russia, Atmega 328 at 16mhz.
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Fuck that noise. I have projects to build. They can use 8-bit PIC
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Arduino prices are already 2-3 times higher than they used to be - this is bad news for hobbyists!
I guess it's time to move on to more modern devices like ESP32 and Pi Pico. But sometimes the simple old-fashioned 5V ATMega is just easier.
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this is bad news for hobbyists!
No, it may give them the kick they need to abandon this old architecture and move on to something more modern. I've already given up on AVR and moved to ARM. Same price, faster, far more functionality, just as easy to use.
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No, it may give them the kick they need to abandon this old architecture and move on to something more modern. I've already given up on AVR and moved to ARM. Same price, faster, far more functionality, just as easy to use.
But then you might as well get something like a Pi Zero, and have a full modern OS ... Those $40 phones are tempting - you get a battery, display, case touchscreen included. I/O over USB-OTG is easy. So now you are using the bloated monstrosity that is Android for your embedded project :-)
As a coder, I actually enjoy the retro appeal of an 8-bit processor. It makes a good first step for teaching kids. But I'm giving in to the inevitable, and trying a Pi Pico.
Who needs more than a Z80? (Score:2)
The space shuttles ran on these devices although the exploded somewhat half way through their voyage.
If the use case is for Russian rockets, that fact might not be such a problem.
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Why allow anything? (Score:3)
Just ban all exports of chips to Russia and Belarus period regardless of power.
Re:Why allow anything? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just ban all exports of chips to Russia and Belarus period regardless of power.
No can do. In the year of our lord 2022, you need chips for certain things like ECG machines, defibrilators, water/electricity/naturalgas SCADA sensors... You know...
Embargoing those chips would make the west seem inhuman, and galvanize the russian population around putin.
You need to embargo only chips with military applications, and those that keep the economy growing to line the pockets of the oligarchs, without leavoing the russian people without electricity gas and medical equipent/services.
PS: Living in venezuela, under sanctions too.
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Just ban all exports of chips to Russia and Belarus period regardless of power.
The point is not to fund the war machine, and to cripple higher technology, not to make citizens freeze in their homes because the makers of gas boilers can't get the crappy 4MHz microcontroller they need to control the boilers.
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China does have decent fabs, but nothing compared to Taiwan, Europe or the USA. The performance limits imposed here can be easily enforced by these "western" nations, whereas China will happily supply their homegrown chips to Russia as long as they can pay for them. Imposing sanctions on low performance chips will neither gain the west anything, nor will it be a restriction of any kind for Russia.
How do you get 5GFLOP with 25MHz? (Score:2)
Something is off here. Does not even make sense for FPGAs.
This is probably 5MFLOP. Basically an original Arduino (with an FPU added?) is the max they can get legally. Even a low low end Cortex M0 is typically 100MHz or higher.
does this worsen the chip shortages? (Score:2)
The're be no more Arduino's left. (Score:2)
It must be the 386DX (Score:2)
Neon (Score:2)
I find this story suspect for a simple reason.
Russia is a major exporter of neon, most of it to Tiawan. No neon no chips.
chip monopolies (Score:2)
So the world is essentially forcing Russia to create its own semiconductor industry. Which will take a decade or two at least, even under good circumstance (one reason why Europe, for example, hasn't done it and the US barely) and it will cost many billions (the other reason). With sanctions and all, that's an optimistic estimate and Russia will probably be 30 years behind the rest of the world's tech for decades. On the other hand, with relations already fucked up, they won't hesitate to go back to cold wa
This is heralding the return of good video games! (Score:2)
Imagine a Beowulf cluster (Score:2)
of these chips !
Re:Just red tape (Score:5, Insightful)
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Cuba also has import restrictions on technology. It didn't stop them.
Tourists smuggle USB drives to Cuba for their citizens, but they are still not exactly a technological powerhouse. I hope we can make the new Soviet Union more like them. I think we will.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/... [www.cbc.ca]
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Tourists smuggle USB drives to Cuba for their citizens...
No they don't. You could go to Cuba yourself to see, except your government won't let you.
Land of the free.
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No they don't. You could go to Cuba yourself to see, except your government won't let you.
Land of the free.
I'm Canadian and Cuba has long been a popular tourist destination. Hence the Canadian news link.
Cuba is still not known for its advanced technology.
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I had several on me the last time I went, and the customs guys didn't bat an eylid.
The whole point of the link you posted is that American still sanctions Cuba, more than 60 years after losing a war to them which is why Cubans have to reply on pirated movies.
There is no way Cubans are the bad guys.
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America does still sanction Cuba, and I don't agree with it, but there is no denying it has held back their economy bigtime. Now we will do the same to Russia. They actually deserve it. My response to the OP "Cuba also has import restrictions on technology. It didn't stop them." remains unchanged.
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Let that be a lesson to the world: the only country allowed to beat the Americans is Canada.
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Mostly, this shows how utterly terribly useless those sanctions are.
What regimes are mostly sanctioned by the West:
- Iran
- North Korea
- Cuba
- now: Russia
And it has done WHAT to their regimes?
Nothing. Jack Shit. Nada.
All these regimes are still in power, with absolutely no signs of losing power.
Sanctions are crap. They seem to make regimes stronger and belligerent countries more self-reliant and thus being more able to wage war.
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You don't have any alternate timelines with which to show that no sanctions gives the same result.
This is the same dumb argument as "We have seatbelts, and *still* people die in car crashes! Seatbelts must be useless!"
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I hope we can make the new Soviet Union
the 90s called. they want their cccp back.
more like them. I think we will.
probably. that will be one important ally down for china. wrecking ukraine in the process is just the cost of doing democracy ...
it will be fun to watch if it backfires, though! :o)
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the 90s called. they want their cccp back.
Sadly so does Putin.
wrecking ukraine in the process is just the cost of doing democracy ...
We will rebuild Ukraine with Russia's money. Just wait and watch.
And Mexico paid (Score:2)
for the border wall?
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for the border wall?
No for the yachts to be auctioned.
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If a single nuke gets launched from Russian soil, the stories about Moscow start with "once upon a time".
Re:Just red tape (Score:5, Informative)
Cuba also has import restrictions on technology. It didn't stop them.
Cuba does not consider themselves a world power that needs to flight technology.
It's just not the same thing. Trying to field a modern dominating military and economy that can't buy the electronics needed to field those things is not the same as a Caribbean country that isn't trying to take over the world.
Re:Just red tape (Score:5, Interesting)
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Mostly "orange man insignificant".
Seriously, why do people still care about this has-been?
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Re: Just red tape (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah wars are fine. But orange man bad. You people are majorly fucked up with your TDS. I would gladly trade mean tweets in exchange for proxy wars, but for you guys politics are everything. Pretty fucking sick if you ask me. You better pray Biden will not send you to the next proxy war to fight.
You have a long history of talking crap here but this is some sort of brown high-water mark.
Russia invaded Ukraine, with Trump's approval. It has turned into a proxy war, but it first had to be a war and that's 100% on Putin. And it has become a proxy war because everyone - even you - knows that if he wins there will be a next target for him, probably Moldova, and Taiwan will be in the sights of China.
Not getting involved is not an option for the West nor for anyone that believes that the weak should be prey for the strong. Pretending that we somehow voluntarily got involved is the sort of isolationist propaganda that doesn't stand the slightest scrutiny.
I know you are a pathetic waste of skin who likes to parade himself as some sort of political warrior from the safety of his distant keyboard, but maybe instead of doing that you should spend some effort on becoming a human being.
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Russia invaded Ukraine, with Trump's approval.
[citation needed[
Seriously, Darth Cheeto was in office from Jan 2017-Jan 2021 and Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and 2022. Where is his "approval" in a thing, here?
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Trump was telling the NRA just the other day that he had no problem with Putin's unprovoked attack on a neighbour in the same speech where he said he had no problem with kids being massacred if it meant that his rich mates could play cowboys and indians in the woods at weekends. I believe he may have said innocent people being murdered was one of the few things left which give him an erection, but perhaps that was just implied.
Re: Just red tape (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, perhaps your opinion is that you don't care about any of this, but you will certainly start caring once China owns TSMC and controls the only source of truly high-end chips to American companies. Imagine the economic devastation if China can blackmail American tech companies to move jobs to China if they want access to high-end silicon.
That's what this is about. Not about the orange guy, or Ukraine, or tweets. All of this is much more complex than "war bad" or "TDS" or whatever other slogan you want to throw at people you think are your enemies.
Re:Just red tape (Score:5, Informative)
Putin was waiting for Trump to withdraw from (and thereby cripple) NATO, giving him free reign to do whatever he wanted.
Re: Just red tape (Score:2)
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Well the US didn't withdraw from NATO
Because Trump didn't get a 2nd term. If he had, Russia would be cannibalizing Europe right now.
Re: Just red tape (Score:2)
Russia didn't invade until Putin got sick and realized that his plan had to change into a rush job.
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Just a standard size for PGAs, for example. Nothing nefarious.
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Yes. That's how you get 5 GFLOPS out of a 25 MHz device.
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Half of my upload speed with Comcast so-called "gigabit" service in Silicon Valley.